Baldur's Gate 3 does a stellar job of teaching new players the underlying mechanics of the game in digestible, bite-sized chunks of knowledge. Every time players interact with a new element of the game; a tooltip pops up explaining how that mechanic works.
But when a million different things demand players' attention, it's easy to miss certain aspects that the game tries to tell you about, either because you didn't read the tooltip or the explanation didn't register. Here are some mistakes we see new players often make when starting out with BG3.
Updated by Hamza Haq on August 27, 2023: Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive game, and its scope can be easily overwhelming to new players unfamiliar with the genre and the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Five new tips have been added to the list to give players a more extensive list of things to avoid during their first playthrough.
15 Missing Environmental Kills
One of Baldur's Gate 3's most satisfying features is using the environment to your advantage. While it definitely isn't necessary, and you can go through the game without having one environmental kill to your name, knowing how and when to use the environment to your advantage can change the way you interact with the game.
An enemy standing on the edge of a chasm? Push him off for an easy kill (Hint: Thunderwave has an AoE push built-in). A flaming chandelier swinging from the rafters above a group of goblins? Shoot it down to cover the ground in hellfire, and so on. This information comes in especially useful when you're facing off against a hard combat encounter that just isn't going your way.
14 Not Learning Spells From Scrolls
Scrolls are an abundant resource in Faerun, and you'll find more than your fair share throughout your journey. Other than being used as one-time spells by any of your characters, scrolls can also be consumed by your resident Wizard to learn the spell inscribed into them.
Say you have Gale in your party and a scroll of Fireball. If Gale doesn't yet know Fireball, you can spend some gold to have him use the Scroll of Fireball to add that spell to his grimoire permanently. He'll still need to unlock a third-tier spell slot to cast it, though.
13 Not Talking To Animals & Dead Bodies
A major portion of Baldur's Gate 3's story and narrative is locked behind the ability to talk to animals and to the dead. Speak with Animals and Speak with Dead are both ritual spells that can be cast once and remain persistently on your character until the next long rest.
Having at least one member in your party who knows these two spells is going to do wonders for your playthrough. Along your journey, you can find amulets and equipment that give these spells as a bonus to your characters as long as you wear them.
12 Avoiding Alchemy
A big mistake beginners make is not making full use of the Alchemy option in BG3. At first glance, the Alchemy menu can seem daunting. After all, who wants to sit there and learn about the ten different Salts you can make by adding so and so extracts to create that specific potion that might or might not come in handy?
However, just know that crafting potions and elixirs in this game is as easy as pressing two buttons. "Extract All," located at the bottom of the main Alchemy menu, extracts everything that can be extracted. Then, you'll see which potions can be crafted right at this moment, and just go select them and click craft. It's that simple.
11 Not Using Bonus Actions
Players unfamiliar with the D&D ruleset will often miss one of the most crucial aspects of combat: Bonus Actions. There are three main elements in every combat encounter: An Action, a Bonus Action, and Movement. Each of these three elements is kept separate from each other and work independently.
If you swing a sword in a turn, that's an Action. You can still move anywhere you want to, depending on your characters' movement speed, and you can still do a Bonus Action. Typically, there are a lot fewer Bonus Actions than Actions which is why players often miss this option. Click on the red triangle on the Hotbar to see what Bonus Actions you can take that turn.
10 Avoiding Experimentation With Builds
Experimentation with choices is at the core of what makes BG3 such an attractive game to play. Trying out different builds is not nearly as difficult as some players think. Respeccing only costs 100 Gold in this game, and it can be done as early as level 1 if you know where to look.
Don’t be afraid to swap out party members for new ones or switch your build completely for something as arbitrary as personal preference. Paladins are great fun to play, but Sorcerers might suit you better; you won’t know till you try it.
9 Drinking Healing Potions Directly
If your party gets low, you might be tempted to drink a healing potion on one of the members low on health. Don't. All healing potions have an AoE when they hit the ground, and if thrown near a party member, they will heal them for the full amount.
So if you have three party members who are low, instead of using three separate Bonus Actions on each character, turn to drink three separate healing potions; you can group these characters together and just throw a single vial of potion in the middle, healing everyone.
8 Not Recognizing Merchants
A big mistake beginners often make is not recognizing when someone is a vendor. Not all traders are standing in a market, yelling prices of items on the stall. Some of them are just standing out in the open without a sign signaling that they’re selling gear.
A quick and easy way to tell if someone is a dedicated vendor is by looking at their icon in the minimap at the top right. If their icon is a brown bag with numerals inside, they’re a dedicated vendor with proper stock and gold to sell and barter. Don’t miss talking to any vendors because every one of them has their own unique stock that is rare to find elsewhere.
7 Unbalanced Party
Having a balanced party means you're ready for anything. Most parties should have a good mix of ability scores, roles, spellcasting ability, and martial prowess. If your party shares a common weakness, an enemy that counters one of you will counter everyone.
Having a good mix of healing, DPS, tanking, and support in your party will allow you to face anything with confidence. If you like a particular companion's interactions but their default class doesn't make sense in your party, you can always respec them into a different class by talking to Withers while controlling the companion.
6 Using Equipment Without Proficiency
While Baldur's Gate 3 makes it abundantly obvious that using armor sets and weapons your characters are not proficient in is a bad idea, it's still something that beginners often forget about in the excitement of getting a powerful set of armor.
Typically, a Wizard is not going to be able to wear heavy armor, and if they do, they're not going to be able to cast spells in that armor. Of course, you can dip into the Fighter class to get heavy armor proficiency for your Wizard, but that's rarely the case. Knowing which weapons your character can wield is going to go a long way.
5 Stealing Outside Turn-Based Mode
One of the key reasons to use Turn-Based Mode outside of combat is to make your stealth more effective. If you press C to go into the sneaking mode or press Shift, you'll see everyone's line of vision highlighted in red. Areas that are outside this red zone are areas no one is looking at directly. But, these cones of vision change rapidly as NPCs turn and go about their business. This makes sneaking essentially impossible in a crowded area.
But, if you turn on Turn-Based mode while you're outside the red zone of vision, everyone around you will freeze and wait for you to end your turn before they're allowed to move. Using this, you can easily pickpocket, lockpick, steal, and do any number of dastardly deeds outside of vision while standing in a room full of NPCs. It's an incredibly useful tidbit to know about if you're planning on employing stealth in your playthrough.
4 Using The Stock Hotbar
A surprisingly large number of players fail to recognize that the stock version of the Hotbar that you see when you start a fresh character can be changed to suit your needs. Clicking on the small lock icon on the far right of your Hotbar allows you to tinker around with the orientation and find one that meets your requirements.
The Stock Hotbar comes with two rows, but you can expand it to four rows by pressing the + icon on the right (- icon to do the opposite). The red bars separating common actions, spells, and consumables can be moved laterally to hide or unveil more items under that category. You can also drag/drop actions into your Hotbar from the skills menu (K).
3 Hoarding Every Item
Items and Equipment in Baldur’s Gate 3 get better and better as you progress through the game. If you’re unsure about whether or not you’ll end up using an item later in the game, you won’t. There is always going to be something better to take up the slack when your current equipment becomes outdated.
Find and mark merchants early on. Sell items you don’t plan on using regularly, and use the gold to buy something nice when you see it. No pointing in hoarding things, not even gold. By the time you get to Act 3, you’ll be dealing in items being sold at 30,000 a pop. So don’t be afraid to spend gold in Acts 1 & 2 on a powerful weapon that catches your eye.
2 Avoiding Long Rests
Spellcasters in BG3 are limited in what they can do by their spell slots. You’ll find yourself running out of spells you can cast after one big fight, and the only way to recover is by long rest. New players make the mistake of thinking that long rests are a big deal and they need to explore the entire map before committing to one.
The intended combat/rest cycle in this game is one or two big battles immediately followed by a long rest. You can intersperse short rests in between, but they rarely recover resources, making them just a way for you to heal between battles.
1 Not Examining Enemies
In Baldur's Gate 3, you don't have to guess what an enemy's strengths and weaknesses are; the game tells you straight up. You just have to know where to look. If you right-click on a character or their portrait, you'll be able to select the examine option. Click on it, and a character sheet will pop up with all strengths and weaknesses of the enemy in question.
All their ability scores, strengths, resistances, and weaknesses will be exposed with a click. If an enemy is resistant to fire, you don't want to use Fire Bolt as that would deal half damage. Something like Ray of Frost might be more effective in this case. If an enemy has low WIS, you can easily trap him with Hold Person, as he's likely to fail that saving throw. Knowing your enemy makes the fights much simpler.